Making Excuses, Part 2: The Otherside of Intersectionality

Due to declining health, I've been unable to keep up a regular pace with this blog.  Alack and Alas. 

I've been unable to keep up even an adequate pace with my normal routine, consisting only of going to work, and coming home.  Now I'm facing making a big decision about leaving my fabulously well paying job for something far less demanding (and less well paying). 

I have an interview for one such job tomorrow morning.  I'm upset that I don't think I'll be feeling any better for it.  Hopefully I won't have to look the way I feel.  My goal is to at least not look like a dying aquatic mammal. That's been my impression every time I've gone to the mirror in the last two months. Yeah yeah, I know ---  internalized fat hatred, disableism.... bite me.  Just for the moment.  My ability to sustain this household is on the line here and I'm going to muster every last privilege I can to continue doing so.  :p

Which brings me to one of the many post topics I'd started and never finished.  The Otherside of Intersectionality, the one far less discussed in anti-oppression blogs, is the intersection of privileges.  This matrix of social advantages is used by all, not merely to maintain our own (always) precarious status in the hierarchy of bodies/identities/lives... but in order to avoid descending (perpetually) therein. 

The intersection of privileges is why we have the phenomenon of Co-Dependent Bigotry, and of Kyriarchy, it is why we have LGBT Conservatives who insist that being gay is only a small, merely incidental piece of their lives and that national security and taxation matters MUCH More,  it is why we have an a Western LGBT movement that by and large erases anyone who is not a gay white upper class male.

The intersection of privileges is why we have black people who support the Tea Party, why some immigrants who came to the USA as children would violently enforce border patrol against illegal immigrants, why transsexual women with tremendous amounts of passing privilege, and access to resources for surgery would viciously oppose public association with any and all trans people who do not.   

I point these things out not in judgment, but in acknowledgement of my own similar response in certain situations.   All of the examples above represent different strategies for survival in a hostile environment.  It would be one thing if the consequence of losing privilege was simply not having that privilege.  But its not.  The consequence of losing privilege is an increase in personal suffering.  It's why discussion about privilege is so difficult to begin with.  To be accused of having privilege feels like an accusation that one has not struggled to be where on is.  

The fact is, EVERYBODY is constantly struggling to maintain and/or advance their own position in the hierarchy.  Because doing so results in LESS suffering.  And suffering SUCKS.  Consequently there is no single body in the hierarchy of bodies that does NOT suffer to exist.  Even the whitest, richest, cis-est, straightest, most able-bodied christian man is struggling and suffering to exist.  The main question for those who resist oppression  is not "who has it hardest or easiest?"    But  "at whose expense is one group's own suffering made less?"


Even tho it is in our longterm best interests to resist the oppression of the least advantaged of our own targeted group, we often choose instead to maximize our social advantages over our disadvantages, whether its our ability to "pass" for mainstream members of the dominant group, or class status or financial resources, or the personal approval of a select few powerful dominants, we use any and all of these to counterbalance our own vulnerability as members of the targeted group... and we do it at the expense of the "least" of that group each time.

But identifying the problem is only one part of it.  I can say all of the above, but tomorrow I'm still going to do my best to "pass" for a cis, non-disabled middle class woman who appears thinner than she actually is.  I'm still going to try to neutralize the reality of my blackness by possibly straightening my hair, thus amping up the overall "racially-diluting" effect of my light skin.   Thus sending a subliminal message to my would be employers that I may be black but I'm one of the "okay" ones.

I'm going to do all of this so I can continue to support myself and my Significant Other in the lifestyle we've become accustomed.  But really I'm doing it because if I don't,  I and my S.O. may very well end up on the street in a few months without any kind of job, right along with the "least" of our brothers.  You dig?

So what is the REAL solution to all of the above?  And tell me a solution I can achieve in my lifetime.  You'll forgive me for not being willing to dedicate my own life as well as the lifetimes of my (hypothetical) children and grandchildren for a better world that may never happen 100 years from now, especially when a worse world definitely will happen 100 days from now if I don't all that I just said I would.

This week in -isms

For a while I've been meaning to keep a journal of the isms I encounter on a regular basis.  Not the isms that I encounter in media or news blogs or anything, but the everyday casual isms that real life people let fly in meat space.   So this week I attempted to make an effort listen for and wrie down the ones I encountered on my way to and from work. 

To make it easier and less obvious to do, I kept a log in my cell phone by just texting myself.   However, with Mr. Laplain's birthday and having to cover for a couple of missed shifts at work,  I kept forgetting to pay attention and so I don't have as many as I thought I would. 

Again keep in mind I ever only go two places anyway.... to the bus (or taxi queue) to work.  And to the bus (or taxi queue) back home.  I live in the "nice" part of downtown in my city,  and work near a pretty swanky area... which skews the demographics of the people I encounter a bit. 

This week I mostly took the bus.   I am fully reminded as to why I hate taking the bus.

RACIST

"...and I don't think they should be teaching the Quran in schools anyway.  It's bad enough they can't teach the Bible anymore, but now they want to force all this Muslim stuff on us."
-Overheard at the bus stop waiting to go to work.  Gray haired white man talking to somebody on his cell.  He was gripping the phone so hard I could see his knuckles going white.

"I'm glad they hired the Asian Guy.  We need to keep our competitve edge if we're going to keep up."
- Guy from the IT dept at work.  Like seriously.  He said this.

"So bring  that  one black girl you went with then?"
"What black girl?"
"The one I saw you with at REI"
"Purvi??  She's Indian!! She isn't black! Gross!"
"Oh man, sorry.  I thought she was black.  But bring her along yeah..."
"Naw man, she's got a boyfriend."
-Two teenaged looking White guys. Overheard while waiting outside the bus stop after work.

HOMOPHOBIC

"Well, he's certainly qualified  for the job but I'm worried that he seemed a bit ...moody."
"Yes,  I got a pretty negative vibe from him too.  But do you think he was sensitive to the low office morale in general, tho?
"Yes, Jane he did seem a little bit effeminate, didn't he?"
"Ummm...Huh?"
- VP interjecting while the C.O.O and I discussed the most recent applicant we had  just interviewed.

DISABLEIST

"Ken that was totally Lame, dude."
"Yeah dude way lame."
"Like Christopher Reeves, Lame."
"LOL Like The March of Dimes Lame!"
*HUGE LOLz ALL AROUND*
-Group of 20somethings Overheard on the bus going back home.

"I don't know what her problem is, she's bipolar or something but that's no excuse for being a bitch..."
-Some white woman walking into a restaurant  while in converation with her brown skinned female friend.

FATPHOBIC

"I can't stand that fat fuck!"
-Some white guy coming out of the same restaurant, talking on his cell.

Observations:

It bothered me that I was way more sensitive to the racist things I'd overheard than I was to anything else.  I kept dwelling on those things long after they happened, even tho everything listed above was objectionable. 

It bothers me because I want everyone to feel the same amount of outrage I do about racism, cissexism and homophobia and transphobia in particular.  I want them to feel an emotional connection to the slight.  But the disableist comments didn't impact me in the same way.  In fact it took me a second to remember I should write them down. So how can I expect everyone to have an emotional connection to MY oppressions, regardless of whether or not they experience them too, when I can't reciprocate?

Another thing I  learned this week is that "Lame" really IS a slam against the disabled.  I had once been of the opinion that the word had lost its original meaning and shouldn't be considered a slur... that nobody uses it to indicate an inability to walk anymore.  But these taunts clearly demand that interpretation.   OOPS. Well... no longer will I just let that word slide unchallenged.

I will try this experiment again this week.  Again I was really disorganized this week and kept forgetting to tune in to my environment.  I'd be lying to say that I'm looking forward to hearing even more BS like this tho.

fish are jumpin

You'd think I'd have figured these things out by now, but I only just today realized how triggering the summer time is for me.   All the extra sunshine, the heat, and the indoors humidity and the fucking houseflies that get in the house and never leave... all this brings me right back kicking and screaming to childhood summers spent in Oklahoma. 

And I realize my stomach is tight and tense and I have a feeling of foreboding.  I feel fat and heavy and weak.  I feel hyper aware of all the ways my body isn't fitting me right, is weighing me down, restricting me to where I couldn't run even if I were being chased.  I expect to be chased. Hunted. I expect to hear the screech of tires when I walk outside and somebody calling me and my granddaddy's whole family names. I expect gunfire.

I begin to feel like an animal of prey.   I sniff the air around me in search of  the scent that means danger, the foreign smells of a man in my house, for instance,  my daddy in my mama's house,  my granddaddy in my granny's, any man in my aunties... anywhere only us girls get to stay and be left the hell alone... except whenever the menfolk decide they want to pay a visit between drinking, gambling and breaking the law but no we are too damned polite to say no, not in my house, not here. 

Instead I pick up the random scent of the garbage rotting in the kitchen. I always forget to take out the garbage, it was the one thing the menfolk were supposed to do but never did and  so subconciously I leave it there waiting for a man to do what I know he won't... because at least the disappointment is familiar (oh the irony!).  I go to the bathroom and expect to see the toilet lid up, marking MY home  and sanctuary as THEIR territory, and I expect to smell that pungent piss smell men seem to leave behind them everywhere they go.   And then I am afraid to see what I might see, smell what I might smell.  If I smell piss  in there wouldn't it be because I'm the one who made that pissy smell?   What then does that make me?  So I  hold my breath and I strip naked and I shower and shower and shower...

Getting clean doesn't help.  Taking the trash out doesn't help.  No matter what, I jump at the slightest noises I want to be held but not touched, so I settle for being left alone and above all I am cranky for no damn good reason I can think of. At night I turn the fan on full blast, trying to blast the summer sweat off my body and I lay face down in the mattress and get this deep bone feeling that I'm scared and I want my mommy .....

I hate the motherfucking summer heat.  I hate beautiful sunshiney days and blue skies.  And when I say hate I mean that. I hate it in my soul.  I hate it so much it physically hurts me.  I've always blamed it on my eye condition (keratoconus) and how it predisposes me to be extremely photosensitive.  But now I see how little that has to do with it. 

It's amazing what the body remembers long after the mind has gone.

Racism, Co-Racism and why I hate the word prejudice

By now most people in the anti-oppression blogiverse have heard about the Satoshi Kanazawa Study that black women are "objectively" the least physically attractive of all human beings.

I feel little need to tread ground other better blogfolk have already trod before me (with much more precision than I ever could).  Bottomline, Kanazawa's "study" was execrable, and Psychology Today's editors behaved in a wildly irresponsible manner for publishing it. 

Renee, at the brilliant and engaging blog Womanist Musings, wrote a great post about Psychology Today's lack of accountability in posting the so-called study.  While I agreed wholeheartedly with her take, I differed with her on whether or not Kanazawa's actions could be considered racist, actions which she referred to as "prejudicial."

Here was our exchange: 


ME:

Renee I disagree with not labeling Kanazawa and his actions as racist. True, only White people are uniquely positioned to plug in to a system of White Supremacy and fully benefit from that, but I would think anyone who actively supports and furthers the aims of White Supremacy , including its specific hierachy of racialized bodies (black ones at the bottom), is indeed being racist regardless of their own actual race. If you actively assist the dominant body in its dominance then you are accountabile for your own part in helping maintain the dominant group's supremacy.



RENEE:

If the definition of racism is prejudice plus power then a person of colour cannot be racist because they do not have the power to actualize whatever prejudicial feelings they may have on a systemic level. This separation is absolutely necessary because without it we have no real understanding of the way that Whiteness operates. This however does negate responsibility on the part of poc who choose to further White supremacy through prejudicial actions. I specifically chose not to address Satoshi Kanazawa claims because I believe that they are based on junk science.


Without an understanding of power it is easy to become distracted and believe that the actions of POC like Satoshi Kanazawa have the same effect as racism from White people. Even though Satoshi Kanazawa as an individual is responsible, it is the institution of Whiteness that created the bigotry upon which his conclusions were based. Ultimately racism begins and ends with Whiteness.
 
ME AGAIN: 
 
I will consider this. But ultimately I have a big problem wrapping my head around the idea that there can be such a thing as benefiting at the expense of another without being fully accountable for one's own part in upholding the very system that created the original benefit. Or that one' holding up of that system can be classified as less harmful if one also happens to be a target of that same system.

However I definitely agree that white supremacist prejudce does not and cannot have the same effect coming from a POC as it does from a white person. I will make every effort to consider what youre saying because I respect your opinion and work.
 ........................

 
And I've been thinking about this ever since.  The conclusions I've come to (so far) lead me to believe that anti-racist language (and anti-oppression language in general) is in need of more explicit terminology to deal with the phenomenon of marginalized individuals/groups who actively support their own marginalization and the marginalization of others.
 
We already have the concept of internalized racism, of course  But that doesn't adequately explain why a POC of one ethnicity would go out of their way to uphold racist and white supremacist stereotypes  about another group.  We also have the term Kyriarchy, which I find handy in alot of anti-oppression discourse, but is so widely applicable to just about every single person as to be diluted in its emotional impact when articulating the power dynamics of supremacist structures.
 
So far the only term I can think of that, for me, fully describes the harmful impact of Kanazawa's Study and the Supremacist agenda behind it is Co-Racism.  Or perhaps Co-dependent Racism.  or even Co-signed Racism.

(As far as I know I made these up.  I'm not married to them, just to the idea that we need more words to discuss the spectrum of how racism can influence a POC's actions and beliefs. I did google the terms first and I didn't find anything.  I also looked up definitions of codependency and found alot of applicability to race, in terms of specific POC relationships with Whiteness).
 
Describing as "prejudicial" Kanazawa's blatant advocacy of clearly white supremacist/black subordinant stereotypes  simply because he is a MOC advocating these stereotypes  just doesn't cut it for me.  "Prejudicial" abstracts the offense.   Calling what he did mere prejudice potentially softens the graphic reality that kind of toxic thinking does to black women as a whole.
 
Co-Racism could perhaps describe what's going on more clearly without linguistically removing focus from the racist root of the phenomenon in the first place.  
 
As  I told Renee, I definitely DO agree that the impact of a POC's racial prejudice and a White person's racial prejudice are NOT equivalent.    A white person's upholding of racial prejudice functions entirely to their own (perceived) social benefit and uplift in a white supremacist super-structure.    A POC can never fully benefit from doing the same thing in the same context.
 
But that isn't to say there IS no (perceived) social benefit for a POC to do so.  Particularly when that POC does not belong to the lowest racial caste in the overall racial super-structure (hello again, Kyriarchy).
 
Furthermore there has always been the phenomenon of "selling out"... sucking up to those with the most power to cause you harm is just one of many common  strategies for survival across civilizations.  But survival at the deliberate expense of another MUST be viewed critically in a civilized society.  It must be called out loudly, unambiguously, and in no uncertain terms.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying Renee's post in any way minimizes Kanazawa's Fail and the potential damage his study could do and already has done.  Just the opposite in fact, as she always fiercely call these kinds of things out in her blog.   I just don't believe that "prejudicial" gives enough weight as a descriptor of his actions and motives in this case.

Then again I've always hated the word prejudice.  It's never been powerful enough for my tastes.  And when you take it to "prejudicial" it's damn near poetic sounding.  To me, being prejudiced against a person sounds almost benign.  Saying something is racist snaps your attention to focus.  There really isn't any dithering about the seriousness of that charge.

Which leads me to address one common area of conceptual conflict that I'd like to clear up right now:

Some people (usually White People) like to say that Black People are 'more racist than anybody else.   You'll hear many a troll say this during discussions of Racism.  What they actually mean is that they think Black people are anti-white, unfairly mean to and critical of white people, and that they must think they are oh so special, deserving recognition just because they are Black.

In this way, White people have cleverly defused and re-written the definition of Racism over the last couple of generations or so to mean prejudice against any racial group for any reason.  This is a way of controlling the discourse around White Supremacy, protecting it  by rendering it linguistically inarticulable.

Let me be clear.   THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A BLACK RACIST- that is to say, a black person who exists with the institutional backing to see that their own needs and preferences as a member of the Black Race are met before everyone else's.  

Because THAT is what Racism is.  It's a system of economic, cultural, and social privileging of a dominant race (WHITE people folks, helloooo) over the other designated "lesser" races.   The concept of Race was invented for the express purpose of legitimizing the exploits of European Imperialists, recasting their systematic conquest of lands and indigenous peoples around the globe as part of  the so-called natural order of things.   The Race Concept was a necessary coping mechanism, a rationalization for the morally indefensible. 

Now some 500 years later we have convinced ourselves that Race is a biological reality and that phenotypic similarities across vast ethnic groups indicate an essential truth.  Globally, we are all still struggling with the psychic impact of the White Supremacy delusion called Racism.

A POC attempting to protect himself in a racist environment by adopting racist attitudes himself and then actively using  his environment's racist institutions to distance himself from other marginalized people is entirely different than a White Person attempting to exploit marginalized people in order to uplift  himself. True.
 
But it's not just some de-fanged imitation of Racism Proper for a POC to publish a study that "proves" his personal belief that Black Women are the least attractive of all human beings on the planet.  It may not be Racist, if that means prejudice backed by institutional power on one's own behalf, but it's at the very least CO-RACIST. 

For those of you who prefer analogies with your discussions of violent social policy think of it this way:    Your army  may have somehow hoarded all the firearms while  my army  is left only with sticks to fight back with, but if  I'm always using my stick to trip my troopmate so that you can get a better shot at her (cuz.... just between you and me I couldn't stand her anyway...but shhhhh)  I may as well be fighting on your team, no?


ETA:  Please note, I will not be publishing any comments to debate or discuss the findings of Kanazawa's study, etc.  My final opinion on the subject is that it's co-racist drivel fueled by anti-black stereotypes.  If however you wish to discuss the legitimacy of  co-racism as a concept, or prejudice vs racism and the language we commonly  use to deconstruct racism, please feel free to comment here.  

Jane Laplain

woman shame

I think there's a misconception about trans women that we don't experience body shame as women, except in the sense that we fail to "measure up" to cissexual female phenotypes.   Whatever body shame we do have, the thinking goes, surely revolves around the fact that we simply aren't "woman enough" physically and so we spend every waking moment trying to obtain that "woman enough" body. Piece by piece.

It's practically unheard of that a trans woman could feel anything other than gratitude for the ways in which she actually "meets or exceeds" expectations for what women are "supposed" to look like.

In other words, we can't possibly experience plain old misogyny, sexist oppression, and the inevitable internalized shame issues that come with having a readably feminine body.

Well, we can. 

We do.

I do.

As far as "phenotypes" go, I have a fairly curvy figure.  I'm told this has everything to do with genetics.  Or  perhaps I was young enough for my body to  respond emphatically to estrogen therapy when I first started.  Or perhaps my body just had its own plans from the start.    People think that trans women exist in a perpetual state of transition, we are somehow never quite finished "acquiring" our physical womanhood, and we're always ALWAYS trying to obtain ever more feminine features, by any means necessary.  So obviously if I have a curvy body, it must be some kind of trophy for me, right?  Some kind of collector's item on the mantle of my um...gender 'hobby.'  My body couldn't possibly be real in the way a cis woman's body is real.. I couldn't possibly suffer the same consequences a cis woman with a similar body type might?  My life inside this body couldn't possibly be a real inner life.  Right?

Trans women do tend to spend alot of time fretting about the way their bodies measure up at the start of transition.  But what girl isn't preoccupied with the way her body is beginning to change into something that will eventually mark  her, forevermore, as --"Woman"--?
Because I'm trans, most people assume I've had plastic surgery to look the way I do.  False.  The only cosmetic surgery I've ever had was the one between my legs (which, as I have written about earlier, was a cosmetic and functional failure).  The rest of me... is all me.  Yes really.

I dont say this to make myself out to be superior to anyone who has had plastic surgery.  I hate it when I hear trans women bragging about how little surgery they need to pass, etc.  It's all transphobic bullshit.   Full disclosure tho, and this is very hard for me to admit, I most certainly did once think of myself as "more real" and "better" than other trans women who had had lots of cosmetic surgery in order to pass.  My body was "mostly real" theirs was "mostly constructed."  (There's a little Janice G. Raymond in us all, it would seem?)

This was during a time when my changing body was still young and callow, tho my mind was pre0colonized with cissexist standards of femaleness; In my desperate bid for survival as a woman on these terms, living in a world that clearly wanted me to fail at being a woman, I was more than willing to apply these standards to other trans girls like myself to see how I "ranked."  When I ranked "higher" I congratulated myself (if only inwardly) and tsk tsked at the misfortune of the poor girl being compared to me.   When I ranked "lower" I blamed myself and vowed to work harder on my appearance, to "improve" my presentation, my "realness."

Admitting your own privilege and fail is.. fucking hard.  I'm ashamed of the lateral transphobic oppression of others I engaged in over my lifetime.  I apologize with everything in me.  This is a post for another day.

Back to being in my body.  My body that for over two decades  has both flattered and embarrassed me with it overt femininity.  This body that came from a long proud line of full-figured, full bosomed, full buttocked black and brown women who all at different times in their lives, have worn their bodies bravely, resentfully, deliberately, cautiously. 

I wanted what I saw as that same strength, that mettle. I was eager to join the ranks of womanhood and become indestructible in the face of certain man-caused doom.  I couldn't understand why anyone would dream of discouraging me, let alone my own mother.  I didn't understand why she seemed to resent her womanhood.    As my body changed, I was soon rewarded with a too-fullness of thighs that begged apologies from my mama's lips: "It's a shame you inherited my legs. I'm sorry."   A growing bottom heaviness that furrowed her brow: "You're getting hip-py, miss piggy... better lay off the sweets."   

I was  even prepared for the ocasional bruises on my ass from being slapped and pinched by strange men in public, just ike my Auntie Lisa had all thru her teens.  I was prepared for every woman worry I had witnessed on my mother's face, my aunties face, my grandmothers' faces as they moved guardedly thru the world in their own unmistakeably brown and feminine bodies.

I was unprepared for that silent inner world of woman shame I couldn't yet know or see. The way my own body would one day leave me feeling sexually harassed just to look at myself, because it was.. just too much with the daaaayum! and the pow! sometimes.   

I was unprepared for the relentless self-consciousness about having curves, at having a "figure" that could be commented on at all....   utterly unprepared for the way "slut" would echo in my head everytime I got dressed in a mirror and I had the gall to admire me..."slut slut slut!!  who do you think you are??"



Soon, just the fact that my breasts were the size they were and my butt the size it was made me feel ...pornographic. Like I had turned into some kind of deliberate sex object. I felt silly, like somebody would think I had listened to a Sir Mix Alot album one day and thought, hey what a great idea!   I didn't think anybody could possibly take me seriously looking like this.  Because the only thing a body like this was any good for was looking at, right?

And of course feeling confused, because in some respects, I had deliberately turned myself into an object.  Not for the sake of male attention, but because I didn't know how else to survive in a world dominated by men who seemed to have one of two reactions to me:  abject hatred or confused lust.   Since the former too often resulted in my ass getting kicked or threatened,  I felt that the latter at least gave me a little bit of a chance to protect myself.  Maybe.  But oh what a price I paid for that protection. The price of having a body that so loudly called attention to itself.  Attention I both craved, simply to know I existed, and feared, knowing what it would bring.  

But this body shame went much deeper than mere intent could take me.  It was a shame that seemed to pre-exist me altogether.  An embarrassment in my physical predicament that came to greet me instead of my own image in the mirror. After a lifetime of avoiding mirrors because I didn't like the body I saw there...  I learned to avoid mirrors... all over again.  I had acclimated to the white noise of woman shame that surrounded me.

The shame worked its way deeper in to my psyche, and I began to slowly believe I was "asking for it" just because of the way I looked.  And of course, too many men responded to my body in kind, and I let them.  The attention they paid me left me feeling both flattered and utterly mortified at the same time.

Even today I still cringe when I look down at my 38G's (by my last count) and think "Gross!"  Then I stop and scold myself, but it's too late.  Somehow I always feel like I did something wrong, like I went too far, growing boobs this big...  As if I'd had any control over how my body would turn out. 

But that really isn't the point.. the point is being made to feel bad about your body no matter what; because you're a woman, your body is but an absurd distraction from the business of being ... what?  Human?   You feel a bit chastised, like you should have picked more wisely.. a body that was more discreet, more modest, more...   gender neutral?  Whatever it is you should have done, look at you now! You should feel ashamed of yourself, young lady. 

And so you do.

So.  If you haven't gathered already, I struggle with hella body issues. Not all of them trans related, or disability related, or size related. Some of them are just  female related  believe it or not.   And sometimes it's all of the above.


For instance I have major ambivalence with my wanting and possibly needing breast reduction one day.  The part of me that is exhuasted from the shoulder, neck and back pain from dragging around this damn shelf just wants it all over with, especially since I deal with chronic pain elsewhere.  Then the  part of me that fought tooth and nail to be able to have breasts at all thinks I'm a fool and should just count my blessings.   The part of me that is of this woman-hating, transphobic world thinks that it's all my own damn fault...  that that's what I get for being a woman... Cuz if you didn't want the womanheat you should have stayed out of the kitchen.

And then there's the part of me that just longs to feel comfortable in my own body... someday.  It  wants to look like what I think of myself looking like whenever I picture me in my mind.  This part of me  is always shocked everytime I look in the mirror, because yes indeed I look nothing like I think I do.   Oh sure i no longer look like the wrong damn gender... but after all these years you'd think I'd bear more than just a passing resemblance to the woman I am in my mind... yanno?

And then there is the society that feels the need to dogpile on, just because I'm a woman, and/or just because I have this body.   Patriarchy privileges men with the freedom to dissect and evaluate my body  piece by piece, perpetually appraising its/my worth as a potential receptacle for their unsolicited interest.  It's an outrage to go from feeling trapped in my body to trapped BY my body.  An outrage to feel, after a lifetime, that even after working so hard to get as far away from the "wrong body" as possible, my body still leaves me open to endless commentary, hateful critique and even physical attack from MEN i don't know and don't care to.

Then again, such is life as a woman in a society that hates women.  Yes, I know, I am in alot of company.  Bring me a choir and I'll preach to it, Sister.

Contempt For Trans Men, Much?

Okay

This effed up article is proof of why a reframing of mainstream perspectives on transsexuality as a phenomenon is CRUCIAL for the survival of trans people as a community.

Note their cissexist framework from the jump:   the characterization of "transmen" as biological females and cis women/girls as  "typical girls" , how young CAFAB children who are vocal about not being girls are presented as potentially having a condition in which they are unable to be socialized properly, like some form of autism maybe, (Disableist!).

Note the correlation of young CAFAB trans kids apparently higher incidences of autistic traits being routed into causation for their very certainty that they are indeed not girls: 

“If such girls do believe they have a boy’s mind in a girl’s body, their higher than average number of autistic traits may also mean they hold their beliefs very strongly, and pursue them to the logical conclusion: opting for sex reassignment surgery in adulthood.”


Because, yanno something's gotta be responsible for the crazy idea that these "atypical girls" feel so sure they aren't girls.  They are just confused autistic spectrum females who find that they socialize better with boys, who tend to be less socially advanced to begin with.  That's it!!  (Way to undermine the agency of autistic spec persons too, by the way!!)

More and more I'm becoming militant about the use of Cis when referring to the dominant majority, i.e. those who feel comfortable in the way their bodies were first assigned a gender (which was based on their genitals) and agree either explicitly (yes, my genitals make me a man/woman and that's how it should be!)  or implicitly (thru lack of questioning how they were assigned) to take on the societal implications of that assignment.

Without that framework it is very hard to see the insidiousness of studies like these for what it is.  It starts with the premise that questioning one's gender assignment and/or asserting another gender identity than the one you were given at birth is somehow the result of a neurological disorder.  And that disorder doesn't necessarily point to the gendered hardwiring of the brain so much as that brain's inability to learn social roles properly.

Autistic Spectrum "Disorders" therefore might explain the problematic notion of why any assigned female would grow up to "believe" she  could be anything else but a female (as defined by her reproductive bits).

Before I learned the word cis, stuff like this article would bug me but I was stymied as to how to explain exactly why it was so fucked up.  Cis makes visible that which was invisible and unquestioned.  It also helps me see the Disableism that would otherwise have been a minor issue for me.  But no... because I can understand things thru a trans vs cis lens, I can see the use of disableism to reinforce cissexism for what it is.

I'm so grossed out that a trans woman is apparently on board with this disableist and cissexist study.  But trans people certainly aren't immune to buying into the paradigms of the dominant classes. 

Anyway.. UGH. 

It's stuff like this that also makes me realize that maybe I really must have a much stronger trans identity than I thought...  Because whenever me or my people are under attack from the medical gatekeepers like this, I come out swinging!  >:|

You need to read this

This blog just changed my life today, I think.

This article at the wonderful Leaving Evidence, explains the concept of access intimacy .

I'm a bit shaken up because when I apply the concept to my own life, I clearly see how lacking my life is in ALL forms of intimacy, not just this one.  But access intimacy is something I've certainly experienced in many ways myself and never had a name for.  And I feel its a huge area of concern in my closest relationships today.

I am ashamed of the ways I fail to give the kind of access intimacy that author Mia describes.  I also am ashamed of even needing this kind of intimacy myself and the hard-heartedness I've come to have about ever having it in my life....  the ability to truly physically drop my guard with another human being and trust them not to harm me or shame me or make some kind of mistake that leaves me feeling ashamed in my own body on some level.  

I am ashamed to say I don't think I've ever done this in my life, not even once. Not even close.

I am ashamed of the way I've been acting out for the last 24 hours or so, because I am in so much pain, physically.  I am ashamed of the anger I feel that I should be able to say "I am in so much pain" and have that mean something in the way of "let me make it better."  I am ashamed that there is no way to make it better and there would be no point of anyone even saying that, and even if they did, I'm ashamed of the further rage I'd feel at their asking me because, alas, there is nothing anybody can do to make it go better any time soon, make the pain go away NOW, TODAY, TOMORROW, SOON, not maybe someday, not even me.

I am ashamed of the hostility I have towards anything that diverts my attention from the needs I can meet:  physical needs of having food, water, shelter.  Survival.   I am ashamed at the way I'm coming to see how completely I've invested in survival as a paradigm, rather than in  connection and sharing with others.

I am ashamed that I don't even know if I truly long for connection with others or not or if I just feel guilty for having people in my life who DO long for that and who I know can't get it from me but I continue to let them pine for the day I finally do give in... someday. 

I am ashamed.. but I know that this shame is only the first part.  It is the beginning of a journey I can choose to take so long as I push thru the shame to whatever it is I'm really afraid of feeling on the other side.

I am ashamed that as meaningful and as much of a breakthru this concept for access intimacy has already been for me.... I know that I'm probably not going to change the way I do things for a while, if at all.  If only because I don't see how.... and if it means taking a chance on doing things differently than the way I know for certain keeps me alive... I just don't take that chance.

But maybe.

Getting Real: Being Trans vs Having Trans Experiences

Lately I've been re-evaluating my concepts of "trans identity." 

I just read a post on the excellent blog Critique Of Popular Reason, about the use of trans and cis as adjectives rather than prefixes, which has sort of guilted me into cleaning up my use of the terms and being more meaningful in what I intend to convey when I use them. 

I admit I've been haphazard in writing  trans woman, transwoman, cis man, cis-man  and so on. I've always realized in the back of my mind that each way of writing trans or cis represents a slightly different understanding of the terms, but I didn't think it a big deal.  Well, I do now, so the inconsistency stops today.

Here is what I've come to realize:  As much as I talk about myself being a trans woman,  I don't honestly think of my being trans as an "identity"... so much as a description of my personal history. 

I do not experience being trans in the same way I experience being black, for instance.   For me, being black is very much an identity experience based on shared cultural experiences, shared language, and shared history having been born and raised in the United States among other black people.  I am black not just because I am readable as black, not just because I was "assigned" to be black by larger society based upon my readability as black, and not just because that is how I am expected to identify my race on government documents and other demographic tracking forms.   I am also black because my mama is black, because my family is black, because I am descended from the African Diaspora, and largely, perhaps ultimately, because I was "raised" black and because I am recognizable to other black people as black. 

I do not feel quite the same way about being trans.  For me, at least for right now, I am trans only because I was born into a society based on a truly shitty premise:  that one's reproductive organs predict and define the way in which you will experience yourself, that your genitals predict and define who and what you are, who and what you must grow up to be.  I am trans because I was born into society that refuses to acknowledge the obvious fact that for many many people there is no direct correlation between their reproductive organs and the gendered bodies and the identities in which they find their most valid form of self expression.

To put  it more simply... Society does not allow for being born with a penis and NOT feeling like that has anything to do with anything... other than having been born with a penis.  That existing with a penis between your legs does not MAKE you feel like, think like, act like or identify as male...  even when that same society makes every effort to force you to do exactly that,with its armada of rewards and punishments.  (Of course the same is true of being born with a vagina and not feeling that necessarily connected to one's being a woman). 

Following this point of view, If I am to accept being trans as my identity then I must accept an identity which is based upon society imposing upon me its definition of me, externally, an identity with seemingly no other defining criteria than this particular experience of imposition.   For me, an identity has to be based on much more than being in the same crappy boat as a lot of other people.  I could define being black that way if I wanted... but I do not experience being black that way.  For me, being black is a much fuller and more complex experience than a mere description of my racial phenotype and cultural history.   I feel the same way about being a woman, as well.  There is actually much more to my being a woman than other people's perception of me and treatment of me as a woman. Or even a black woman.  

But for being trans.. at this stage of my self-awareness journey anyways,  it feels like something that is entirely about other people's perception of me as trans, a mere description of my life trajectory  having been assigned to be one gender but I vetoed and invalidated that assignment in favor of my own contrary self-knowledge and need.

I'm sure there is a much fuller experience of trans than what I list above.  Certainly there is a unifying theme of the (apparently) uncommon drive to fly in the face of society's explicit demands for conformity in favor of one's own self-knowing.  Time and again, I have experienced firsthand  that instant bond of recognition and empathy between persons which is born of people living the same oppression.  Especially, when it comes to being trans.  I have definitely experienced community among my fellow trans people...  so why do I feel so keenly that while being trans identifies my life experiences, it is not my identity?

Is it due to internalized transphobia of some sort?   I know as I read this thru and come back to add this paragraph, what I'm saying sounds an awful lot like similar protestations I've heard:   "Being gay doesn't define meeee, I'm just someone who happens to experience homosexual attractions..."  etc.   No that is not what I mean at all, I hope.

What I think I mean is that ... so MUCH of my life, even to this day,  actually revolves around accomodating the social consequences of my being trans.... but is mere oppression enough reason to take it on as an identity?

Personally, I feel I experience MUCH more blatant oppression around my trans status than I do with race. As far as life challenges go, being trans has been many times more difficult than being black and I probably think about it way more than I do race or any other zone of marginalization I live within.   But is that due to my having a more multi-dimensional understanding of  my blackness (identity, culture)  than I do my transness (burden, stigma)?  Or is it because I am loathe to acknowledge areas of privilege in my other identities (do I not experience being black as terribly oppressive  simply because I am relatively privileged as far as my blackness goes, e.g. being light skinned, being middle-class, being from the U.S. etc...?)  and wish only to attach the grand title of "identity" to areas  in my life I feel I can be more "proud" of?

 Is it a lack of self-awareness or lack of  appreciation for the complexity and positive reward of trans experience?

I'm not sure.. but these are questions that consume me on the daily.  I am determined to sort this all out.

Throwing my hat in the ring on:

I've been following the latest story making the rounds about the trans woman who was severely beaten by two cis teenage girls at McDonald's.. 

I really ought to stay out of the commentary on this one.  For me the wounds are still raw when it comes to this particular form of violence.  I already regret my comments on one blog.. tho they may not even be approved.

But I didn't want to lose the conversation so I'll repost what I had said at Women Born Transsexual in response to the following quote:

The attack is a horrible Hate Crime. I hope the video leads to the capture and successful prosecution of the perpetrators of this horrible attack and I further hope they are sentenced to many years within the Prison Industrial Complex and get to spend the rest of their lives regretting having committed this hate crime.



And it is a hate crime on several levels. It is an anti-transsexual/transgender hate crime. There is a racist element to the attack. There is a gang element to it as well.

The “Thug Culture” promoted by so much of rap music and popular culture is almost like an indoctrination program that encourages black kids to commit violent acts that will result in long prison sentences. Pop culture aimed at the youth demographic encourages both violence and a psychopathic disregard for the well-being of others.

Here was my response:

How exactly is it that you can ascribe the actions of these two teenagers to 'hip hop' music and 'thug culture? As if just by virtue of them being black they obviously MUST have been influenced but all the “gangsta” rap music that “black” people listen to.



The only apparent and obvious motives for this attack are transphobia and cissexism. The fact that the victim is (apparently) white may or may not have influenced the attack.. but only in so much as the victim’s (apparent) trans status marked her as wide open for a beating to begin with.


Excuse me while I get graphic and very personal here:


Make no mistake…. in the very earliest days of my transition I too was attacked in public on several occasions and with varying degrees of injury. I am black by the way. And I began transition at 16-17 and wasn’t deemed “passable” until I was 20. During this period I suffered extreme levels of harassment and violence that I’m still trying to recover from to this day. And my harassers varied in age, race, and class, you name it.


The very first time I was attacked in public, I was chased out of a Denny’s at 3am by a group of 5 black men and women, all college aged. They managed to rip out a couple of dreds before I jumped in my car and drove to safety.


The second time I was attacked in a mall by a mixed group of 6 black, white and hispanic men also colleged aged. They had a disposable camera they had procured for the occasion while following me and took turns holding my arms while they posed me with in the pictures and forced me to simulate sex acts for said photos. Mall security did not intervene for 20 minutes.


The third time it happened I was pushed off of a moving metro bus by three black teenaged girls because I wouldn’t answer them as to whether I was a man, a woman or “some kind of dyke.”


In all three of the above instances, it was clear they were doing this because they thought I was a “man trying to be a woman” or because I refused to clarify my gender to their satisfaction. Transphobia. Cissexism.


In all three instances, bystanders stood by and watched it happen and even cheered my attack on.


The only constant in those three examples was the youth of my attackers and the fact that I was readable as trans to my attackers.


The racism that IS driving this Baltimore story is the racist public backlash against black youth who OBVIOUSLY must be brainwashed by all their rap music to the point that they DARE to do violence to a white person.


Nevermind the fact that cissexist infrastructures will strip even the whitest body of all its privilege when that white body can be read as trans. No, let’s look to tired stereotypes about black culture and rap music to explain this horrible event.. let’s look everywhere but society’s accountability to the hierarchy of bodies that it has created.


As you can see... this incident hits really really close for me.   I wish I hadn't descended into personal anecdote in trying to make my point.. but for me I can't seem to talk about transphobic public attacks without including my own experiences. 

I just wanted to repost my comment here at my own blog because I think the issue of how Race intersects with this incident IS an important element to discuss.  But its only being discussed as if blackness itself is at fault for the attack on this woman.  The  REAL culprit... society's cissexist brainwashing of people to defend the arbitrary boundaries of assigned gender at all costs, up to and including homicide... is mostly being ignored.

If anyone is up for a sensible conversation about racism, cissexism and THIS incident, please comment here.   I wanted to create a space for  what I already saw lacking.... 

If nobody takes me up on it that's fine too.  But as a black trans woman, I just didn't feel comfortable letting white people and cis people control the discourse on this incident unchallenged.

ETA:  The victim of the beating speaks to the media.  Apparently her use of the restroom had little to nothing to do with the incident, and indeed the employees and patrons sat and watched and did nothing to intervene. 

Wherein I make excuses for my participation in dreadful things

WARNING:  Purely personal ranting and purging ahead.

This isn't really a continuation of my post on privilege, but it does have alot to do with my actual privilege.  And alot to do with being lucky as hell with no small amount of skill at manipulating others.

At the beginning of this year I was in a dead panic about my employment situation. I had just found out that my company was about to sign a client who'd require extensive background checks on everyone in my dept.   Being that I'm not out as queer at my job, let alone trans, I felt this was really bad news.   It wasn't that I felt that my work environment was especially transphobic or hateful... I just know how things inevitably change with cis people once they know for sure that you're trans.  They may have suspected all along.  They may have had no clue.  They may have known for sure in their hearts but were just being respectful of your privacy.  But once "yep, I'm trans" is on the table, suddenly cis attitudes and behaviors shift, and not for the more accepting.  Suddenly,  cis people start slipping up on pronouns where they never did before.  Suddenly cis people are reluctant to go to the restroom at the same time as you.  Suddenly cis people have all sorts of wildly inappropriate comments and questions about surgeries and body parts they never would have dared saying before....    It's exhuasting.  It's death by a thousand personal questions. Death by awkward silences when you enter the room, by catching unstealthy coworkers darting their  eyes away from you as soon as you glance their way... over and over again ....until you finally go away becuz you're so damned tired of being stared at and never seen.

No I didn't want to go thru any of that, not again... not with me only now getting  life back on track financially, not with me finally feeling like I could live life as a human person and not a moral fugitive with a terrible secret.   But I didn't see any reasonable way to hide my assigned past during a federal background check.  So I started to hunt for another gig.

Ever practical, I also kept my ear to the ground at the workplace for other opportunties.  It was a long shot but I thought, maybe if there wasn't an easy way out, there might be a way ... up?

Well, there was, apparently.

To make a very long story short, I am still at the same place of employment I was before, but  promoted to a position of some authority, and with HR clearance.  Not to mention a huge raise to boot, the largest raise I've ever personally heard of anyone getting for the kind of work I do.     All of that and control over my own employee documentation too.  =|

And oh....  To get this position I was forced to challenge the person who hired me for HER job and I won.  (To be fair, she really wasn't very good at key parts of the job... like not being an openly racist snob.  I mean she SUPPORTED the idea of the AZ "Papers Please" Bill, so that should tell you a few things.... ).   She was demoted. I was promoted.  My gain, her loss.

But  yeah even if somebody wanted to do a background check on my entire dept, it is actually now MY responsibility to carry out and report the details to the HR manager.  I am much more confident that I would be able to keep any "troubling" personal info confined to one or two sets of eyes in upper management only. 

If you know anything at all about the way trans people are routinely undone by background checks, Social Security no-match letters, and accusations of insurance fraud, you'll know that I'm lucky as hell.   To have that kind of harm reduction built into my job is a privilege I can't afford to take for granted.

I wasn't only worried about being "outed" tho.   For the last two years I've been in a precarious financial way all around, being the sole income source for two adults, living entire paycheck to entire paycheck, with zero savings and zero ability to save.    This coming on the heels of WA State Disability declaring war against all its enrollees making Mr. Laplain's situation even more dire than just my own.  But thanks to this new job, I am doubly confident that if he were to lose his benefits altogether, we'd still be able to get by... maybe even better than that.

Oh and here's the funny thing.  I've since come to the conclusion that I actually DON'T care about being outed at this job anymore.  Yes, part of it is security in my new position...  maybe even most of it.. considering that I only came to this conclusion AFTER i realized my chances of being outed were much reduced.  Still that  initial scare set me on a period of reflection, wherein I began processing a few unhealed wounds.

The fact is, I can't and won't go back to living with that level of paranoia anymore.  During my first marriage,  I lived stealth for about 5 years.  5 years of hell.  I was married (or so i thought), to a closeted, wannabe social climber type.  I was his exotic arm candy for office parties, republican fundraisers and political rallies.  I was his "inside joke" on his ultra conservative circle of friends and frenemies, whom he simultaneously despised and longed to be like.  It was the most confusing, demoralizing, confidence draining period of my life.  I gave up everything I thought mattered to me for the security of my husband's racist/classist/cissexist facade.   This would be a long post for another day.  The point is, the thought of going back to a life where I'm worried who knows about me and who merely suspects and what harm they can do me....   well I can't and I won't do that ever again.

So.  Hooray for phases of spiritual growth.

Let me be real tho.   Nothing is guaranteed in this world, and with this particular gig, all these shiny new hopes will disappear overnight if my company doesn't survive this first stage of rapid growth with the new client we signed (not the creepy background searchers... they got paranoid and backed out at the last minute, go figure!)  I  may be out of the poorhouse, but I ain't out of the woods yet.

So why do I feel so damned proud of myself then?  Why do I feel like I really accomplished something to be crowed about?  What did I do exactly?    I brought two adults who were living right on the poverty line and dangerously close to homelessness ... well into lower middle class, YEAH!   I jumped the gates of the poorhouse and landed in a Honda Accord.

What I did accomplish was what I always seem to in the end... I survived.  In this case survival meant I successfully took advantage of my various educational privileges, schmoozed the right execs, then gambled and won on a longshot promotion.  I "played the game," as it were. 

 I do feel guilty for surviving where others have perished.  I mean even literally in the here and now.. I am now my boss's boss! What the hell???   But mostly I feel guilty for not feeling more guilty.  I feel like I deserve to do whatever it takes at whoever's expense to survive if I have to.  I feel like the world I live in has made it very clear it would rather see me die, fail,  disappear.  I know that this is because the world is built on many interlacing systems of oppression and that it is nigh impossible to experience advantage without causing someone else somewhere to experience disadvantage.    I want to feel something when I sit down and take stock of my complicity in  these systems of oppression and inequality.  Yes, I now line my pocketbook while my peers do without.  But I feel like I've "paid my dues"...   I feel like ME  benefiting from unfair systems in any way can't really be so bad.. because look at all I had to go thru to get to here.

I try not to think about all the people who went thru all I had to go thru and more and didn't make it. I don't want to think about the basic unfairness of this world. I just want to survive it.  I want to stop the suffering.  MY suffering.

I know it is this attitude that keeps otherwise good people from making meaningful changes in their social environments.

But even so, I am angry because I feel the need to apologize for having survived, for having known ANY pleasure or advantages in life.  It's like... so you wanted my life to be nothing but hardship and lack??  Like my friend Carmen's or Shandra's or Alexa's??  Well they're all dead now.    And now what?  What does their being dead mean other than they are no longer suffering in a world that never wanted them?  What does my being alive matter in a world that never wanted me?  And if it doesn't matter, how does it matter if I'm suffering or I'm complacent or blissfully unaware?

I have no idea what this post is about.  Forgive me.